


Tender Mercies

by Irisunohimitsu



Series: The Long Life of Loki Leifson [3]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Dark, Dark Magic, False Identity, Forced Prostitution, Jötunn Loki, Multi, Sexual Violence, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-28
Updated: 2016-10-28
Packaged: 2018-08-27 11:01:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8399206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Irisunohimitsu/pseuds/Irisunohimitsu
Summary: "I have spent what amounts to near half your lifetime at the tender mercies of men with desires far darker than you could dream. Men in full possession of the means to realise those torments."
 Today, Loki Leifson is known only as Jack Frost, but it was not always so. He has taken many names and been many men. Some of those men were desperate, some were miserable and still more were simply cold. Only one of them ever thought he could be good.This is the story of how that man died.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Silver, AKA Loki Leifson is an AU Loki I have created for my multi-chapter Jack Frost. You're welcome to read this story without reading that first, but you'll be missing a fair bit of context.
> 
> For those who can't be bothered to read 30,000+ words before they get to this one-shot; Loki has been raised on Earth, not Asgard and is now a jaded, thousand year old mercenary who goes by the name of Jack Frost. He's a pretty dark guy, but he does have limits, including a strong reluctance to harm innocents without very good reason. This story may go some way towards explaining both the reluctance and the darkness.
> 
> Here lies the story of one of the darkest points in his life. I repeat, it is dark AF.
> 
> There are graphic descriptions of violence in this story, as well as semi-graphic descriptions of sexual abuse - they're not detailed, but they are grotesque. If this will bother you, but you want a rough idea of what happens for context to the main story (Jack Frost), I will put a TGDR (Too Gross Didn't Read) version at the end.

A group of several rich men and women sat, laughing around a table. The table was spread with sumptuous food and wine, huge pillar candles dripping wax onto expensive silk tablecloths. They were no more careful with their food than they had been with the placement of their candles, and drops of sauce and grease joined the wax splashed liberally across the dark material.

A bone-thin, miserable man crouched, shivering under the table. His hands, wrapped in heavy cuffs joined by a fine chain were locked to a bolt in the floor, holding him in place as he waited, avoiding the swinging feet of the people above where possible. One or two booted toes still caught him though, and he muffled the cries of pain with his shoulder when one caught him in his already-damaged ribs.

The man was known to no-one in the outside world. The one man of that era who had known his true name, who had really known _him_ was dead, so now his name was lost. Had anyone known to do so though, they might have called him Loki.

The one who had known him was Lord Merton, and Loki still mourned his passing, in the moments he had to spare in-between his own miseries. In a way, it was Lord Merton’s advice that had led Loki to where he was now, but he could not bring himself to despise the man for it. Not yet. But with every passing day Loki’s resolve weakened, and his lingering love grew ever closer to bitter hatred.

Upon his deathbed, Lord Merton had convinced Loki of his potential for good, as well as evil – something Loki desperately wanted to believe. So, the day after his visit with Merton Loki had packed up no more than he needed for the journey and set out for the Continent with a heart that felt lighter for the first time in centuries.

* * *

 

Silver arrived out of the mist to a quiet town in the Italian mountains. He gave no other name, only explained that he had picked the name Silver up on his travels as a result of his striking hair – uncommonly for a man so young, his hair was a steely shade of grey. It was light and fine, and shone under sunlight like the silver that had become his namesake. His eyes matched the colour of his hair near perfectly, though perhaps a shade darker. Either way, ‘Silver’ suited him well enough that no-one in the small town ever bothered to question why he used a name so clearly not his own.

All were in agreement that whatever his origin, Silver was a good man. He settled in an out-of-the-way corner of the village, constructing a rough hide tent and refusing all offers of more comfortable accommodation. Before long, he began to appear at odd times around the village – when the crops were poor he would appear and somehow there would be enough to go around. When a woman’s labour was looking dangerous, Silver would pop by to offer his help and suddenly the life-threatening issue would dissolve. Occasionally, members of the village would face attack from the bandits that surrounded the town, and Silver would always be there to bring them back to safety. Gradually, over the course of a few years the villagers learnt to come to Silver with problems – he often seemed able to help with things that seemed impossible.

After a while they began to ask Silver for help even with their less extraordinary issues. Silver learned to arbitrate disputes between local farmers and how to fairly distribute possessions between sons and daughters who had lost a parent. He even learned how to keep the townspeople calm in a crisis such as that which occurred when a storm with the highest winds ever seen tore the rooves from any number of houses; and how to manage the repairs with maximum efficiency.

Nobody in the village cared that Silver never aged. They came to rely on him in almost all things, and Silver loved the sense of belonging their reliance gave him. He had a canny wisdom beyond the appearance of his age and helped them to manage their day-to-day lives with authority and diplomacy. Silver himself almost began to think he had found the ‘family’ he was once promised. Unbeknownst to him, the villagers had come to think the same – Silver was an integral part of their tiny town.

Sometimes, Silver would leave on explorations the villagers never quite knew the nature of. He would leave one day without warning and return quite suddenly, as if he were never gone. When asked about his travels he would only demur politely that they were quite satisfactory, lips stretched in an enigmatic smile. However long he was away for, both he and the villagers always knew he would come back.

Until one day he didn’t. Years passed as the villagers waited. Silver had been gone for nearly a generation before, and returned as if from nowhere, so they weren’t worried. In fact, they were never worried even when years passed, then decades. Generations remembered and passed on, and eventually the memory of Silver dissipated like the mist he had first emerged from.

* * *

 

Loki had left with an optimistic bent to his thoughts. His village – and he had indeed begun to think of it as _his_ village – was doing well. The villagers had come to rely on him in a way that he could not help but greedily hoard, the knowledge that he was not just needed, but wanted fed a warmth inside him he thought he had lost with his Father. The fact that they knew him by a name other than his own mattered little. Loki Leifson was lost to history, so he may as well go by Silver, or even Jack Frost.

His latest foray into the outside world was to meet a man of whom Loki knew very little. He was whispered of in the less savoury magical circles, but generally not spoken of amongst the wealthier practitioners. However, the latest gossip suggested that this man had discovered some new bent of magic that allowed him to disappear from one spot, and reappear almost instantly in another. Loki _wanted_ that knowledge, for reasons he was not quite clear on. Certainly, in a life such as that he swore he had left it would be useful. Why he wanted it now with his peaceful mountain lifestyle he was not so sure. It would undeniably be useful for getting around the place, but Loki thirsted for the knowledge with a desperation that seemed almost unnatural.

Perhaps, had he taken the time to examine that thirst in greater detail he might have realised there was no natural source – might have realised the trap he was walking into.

* * *

He met Francesco Schiavone at his home on the Isle of Sicily. The journey down had taken the better part of 2 months, and Loki finally arrived late in the evening, exhausted from the long journey. Schiavone met him in the foyer with a wide grin, which only broadened further when he took in the unusual, fascinating colouring Loki currently wore. He kissed Loki on each cheek and pressed a glass of rich wine into his hands, pulling him forward into the light to see him better.

The first sign Loki had that something was wrong was when Schiavone stepped well back to sip his own wine, staring at Loki with an almost expectant gaze.

The second was when Schiavone winked out of existence altogether, and the room suddenly felt oppressively dark. The light in the room did not change – the feeling of darkness came from the fact that somehow, Loki’s grasp of magic was being drained from his very core. He shuddered and the wine glass fell from his fingers, shattering across the stone floor and splashing wine across a matrix of unholy runes and sigils. Loki’s vision swam before he could entirely grasp their meaning, but he had time to pick out glyphs promising weakness, captivity and defeat before his knees gave way and his vision greyed.

He was so weakened by the power of this trap that he could do no more than flap ineffectively when Schiavone reappeared, snapping a pair of cuffs around his wrists that magnified the oppressive, draining feeling to an impossible degree until Loki finally succumbed to darkness.

* * *

Under the table, Loki heard the tide of conversation turn. There were new guests there tonight, and Schiavone wanted to show off his ‘delicious boy.’

“Wait until you see him,” he boasted, hand searching under the table as Loki tried to cringe away. “Hair the colour of moonlight and eyes just as pretty.”

The bolt fastening Loki’s hands to the floor dissolved as one of Schiavone’s hands fisted itself in Loki’s hair, dragging him out from under the table and pulling him up to kneel in front of his audience. Somehow, despite every time it had been proved futile, despite being defeated over and over again for more than a decade, Loki still fought. Oh, his shackles made him week as a kitten, he could barely walk unaided, never mind fight them off, but he _refused_ to scream, refused even to talk, and they always, _always_ had to force themselves upon him. No matter what the bribe, no matter what the punishment he had never offered himself up freely. And, he swore with a resolve which weakened every day, he never would.

Futile though it may be, he put up a token resistance even physically as he was passed across the room, with hands forcing themselves upon him, fingers roughly invading his every orifice as he slapped and scratched at any foreign skin he could reach. Finally, he was pushed against the wall and winched up until he hung there by his cuffs, with new chains snaking around to pull his ankles out so he was exposed to those waiting behind him.

The whip, today, he realised as the first lash laid itself mercilessly across his back. They hadn’t used it for a while, so it was inevitable he would have to suffer it sometime soon – really he ought to have seen it coming.

He bore the first hundred lashes with his silence intact. The second hundred too brought no more than a few aborted grunts. However, his physical resistance was all but gone, and he did nothing to stop the men and women who approached to take advantage of his prone form when he was brought down and laid on one of the tables.

He was filled, again and again, not just by men but by cruel, unyielding objects of impossible sizes, wielded by men and women without a scrap of mercy. Then he was healed, his back allowed to knit together and they began to break him down again. This time, they broke him after only one hundred and fifty-six lashes of the whip. Finally, he screamed, and collapsed, hanging utterly loose in his bonds, his body a wreck. They enjoyed this for a while, he was deliciously pliant when he was barely conscious – but eventually such non-responsiveness grew boring.

One of them decided to get creative, announced an idea, something new to try with their toy. Loki dreaded these moments more than any other – they were always the most debasing, the most painful. These moments were the ones that proved his soul was beyond redemption, for how could anyone with even the least spark of good in them deserve such torment?

First, Loki burned. The fires of hell reached up to him and tore him from the Earth, marking him and blackening him and twisting his body into impossible configurations as they laughed, more and more ropes of fire springing from their fingers to wrap around him and raze what remained of his resistance to the ground. Screams erupted from his body like lava from the volcano he was submerged in, surging up the walls of the hall and echoing in the vast arched ceiling.

Oh how they laughed as one of them, blessed with a talisman to protect him from fire reached in to make use of Loki’s mouth, stretched wide in another tearing scream. Loki’s shrieks became gurgles as the robed man pushed into his throat, and he felt another man take position behind him, forcing his way into the abused orifice already slick with what other men had left behind.

The man at his throat pulled back and was replaced by the salty tang of a woman’s flesh. Loki gasped a breath before his mouth and nose were covered by the moist, suffocating heat. And still he writhed in flames, welts and blisters across every inch of his body.

The assault continued for what felt like hours as Loki bucked and thrashed against the pain. They were delighted with this latest idea – a new way to breathe life into their pitiful slave once the fight had finally been drained out of him.

Until they decided they wished him pliant again. A struggling thrall wreathed in flames was no longer what they needed, now they wanted him still as stone. This was when they made their mistake, for they decided to employ that which must always be the antithesis of fire: ice.

Loki was born in ice, Loki was found in ice. Ice lived in his heart and flowed through his veins, and ice gave his mind the power to think. Ice froze away the heat of his emotions and lent him cold, remorseless clarity. Loki _was_ ice.

He had assumed, before, that the cuffs which bound his magic would prevent his change to the monster he wore within. After all, he could not cast off his ‘Silver’ form whilst he wore them, so how could he shift so totally as to change his entire physiology? He realised though, as their spells coated his limbs in a crust of ice, that to become the monster was no ordinary shift, but was something entirely different. The spells the men and women cast encased him, held him still and solid and Loki began to change. His skin darkened to a navy blue, his hair too changed from silver to deepest black. Most prominent though, were his eyes.

They had been silver before the change, the colour of molten lead, and screwed tight shut against the pain and humiliation of his abuse. Now though, they snapped open, red as the hell fires he had just been subjected to and filled with the anger of a thousand avenging demons.

Cold now grew not around him, but from him, shooting out through the room to freeze and shatter every other being there, shards piercing through flesh like a shovel through freshly laid snow, blood warm and hissing as it fell to the suddenly frigid ground and froze in crimson rivulets and puddles.

Still the cold intensified until even the stones that made the hall began to crack. A maelstrom of hail and tiny shards of ice whirled furiously through the room until it stopped, quite suddenly.

In the centre of the room knelt Loki, pieces of the cursed shackles lay shattered around him. He huffed in a few short breaths, staring around him at the carnage of the room he had hated for so many long years.

Finally sure no more danger was coming, he allowed himself to cry – great heaving sobs that ripped from his chest with all the strength of long despaired of relief.

He was free.

Schiavone had lured him there with dark magic, influenced his mind to desire some rare trick only Schiavone possessed the secret for. The only blessing Loki could hope to draw from the sick, torturous years was that he had come away with an intricate understanding of the magic behind those powers. Sometimes, reflection upon magic had been the only way to keep his thoughts from becoming naught but longing for death.

He stood from the ground, his long-stolen strength returned. Finally, with a triumphant, mocking salute towards the destroyed body of Schiavone he vanished.

* * *

He reappeared on a distant hilltop, and watched as the manor burned behind him.

The form of the monster melted away and Loki stood tall, jet black hair blowing in the breeze and green eyes glinting. Silver’s heart had longed to return to his village for twelve long years, but now, Silver was no more. Silver had been a hope, a forlorn dream that he might deserve peace. A dream turned to ashes and shattered into deadly shards of ice.

The manor burned, and Silver burned with it.

**Author's Note:**

> TGDR Version
> 
> Shortly after the death of his first mentor in magic, Lord Merton, Loki travels to Italy and settles in a village in the Italian Alps under the name of Silver. There, he tries to find some peace and prove to himself that he can be good, just as Merton believed.  
> Unfortunately, he is lured to the home of an Italian sorcerer, Schiavone, who captures him and subjects him to extended physical and sexual abuse for twelve long years. Magic is a dangerous tool in the hands of an abuser, but one day Schiavone and his equally cruel companions make a mistake. They choose fire and ice as the tools with which to torment Loki. The fire is painful in the extreme, but the ice releases Loki's Jötun form and gives him the power to escape from his captors, killing every one of them in the process.  
> Convinced that no-one with good in them could ever deserve such horrific treatment, Loki gives up on the guise of Silver and leaves it behind him in the ashes of Schiavone's manor.


End file.
